i'd say - just go read it. period. it's that good.
The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.
Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.
More often people who do great things have careers with the trajectory of a ping-pong ball. They go to school to study A, drop out and get a job doing B, and then become famous for C after taking it up on the side.
and a note about the section discussing love of math vs love of novel writing... completely in sync with his comments of loving math - no matter if you have a job, but i'm thinking that a writer would feel the same about writing novels.
wondering if he's a math guy....
"Always produce" will discover your life's work the way water, with the aid of gravity, finds the hole in your roof.
you have to make a conscious effort to keep your ideas about what you want from being contaminated by what seems possible.
Worse still, anything you work on changes you. If you work too long on tedious stuff, it will rot your brain. And the best paying jobs are most dangerous, because they require your full attention.
Don't decide too soon. Kids who know early what they want to do seem impressive, as if they got the answer to some math question before the other kids. They have an answer, certainly, but odds are it's wrong....(Do you really want your career determined by a highschool kid.)
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